THE WIDOWS PENSION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 104, 29 October 1925, Page 7

THE WIDOWS PENSION

HARBOUR BOARD TO MAKE INCREASES PAYMENT FBOM GENERAL FUNDS Considerable satisfaction ■was expressed by the chairman (Mr. M. Cohen) and members of the Harbour Board last evening at the indication given by the Government that it would allow the board to increase, out of its general funds, the pension payments to widows and other annuitants of the board to £31 per annum to widows and 10s per week in respect of each child. The new scale of charges cannot become operative until certain formalities have been complied with.

Mr. Cohen said, that the board had long recognised that pension payments were inadequate, and had endeavoured, under the chairmanship of 'Mr. J. G. Harkness, in 1910, to have the position improved. Little progress, however, was inside, but the board, under Mr. G. Mitchell, again moved in the matter, ami asked for power to increase the payments by 100 per cent. The Legislature had liot assented to all that was asked for, but had agreed to an increase from .€lB, "an absolutely inadequate and grotesque amount," to £31. Ho remarked, also, upon the fact that the amount which the board could now pay in superannuation to any retired officer was limited to £300 per annum, and to that the board must also address itself.

in answer to Mr. J. AY. M'Ewan, Mr. Cohen said that it was possible that the increase' in the widow's pension might affect the amount to which she was entitled under the Government's pension scheme, but he did not hiniself consider that that should be so, as the board was paying the additional amount out of its general funds. The question would lie inquired into.

Mr. G. Mitchell also expressed satisfaction that the Government had at last given its consent to the board's proposals. He referred to the ready and sympathetic manner in which ail members of tho board had discussed the proposal, and expressed a hope that the day was not far distant when a general superannuation scheme would be evolved for the protection of every man and woman in the Dominion that the shadow of wane and poverty in old ago would be relnoved.